Dark Daze photography blog

Blood Red Shoes….

About two weeks back I got a call from general man about town and Brighton Source Editor James Kendall, apparently the last cover I shot for them, British Sea Power, had gone down a treat with the masses. I know the band also liked it as they happened to be playing in Berlin on my birthday and I had semi-drunkenly stumblebumped into them, unfortunately for them, as I spent far too long spitbeer’n'yellin’ in Noble’s finely tuned musicians’ ear bout how the last gig of theirs at Komedia was one of the best I have ever been to. Man the Beer in Berlin is strong. And it was my birthday. And it was one of the best gigs so yeah I yelled a lot……and Noble nodded graciously, invited us both to a table-tennis beer club and went backstage to plan musical domination. I went back to my beer. Later Sally and I also pissed off a fair few Berliners who seem to be pretty quiet at gigs, even during rousing finales that require more yelling, clapping, stamping, glass throwing and immoliation, or at least thats what we concluded.

Anyway so James needed a new cover shot for Blood Red Shoes, not only a band that I had shot before, but had been probably the most successful Promo I have shot, ever, its been on Radio1 online, Guardian, NME (too many times) about a 100 websites if you google Blood Red Shoes images, Source, Festival guides, blah blah blahhhh and I guess loads of places I don’t know about, ( I shot it before I really understood the importance of Contracts and License of Use….big mistake on my part) and has been straight ripped off by a bunch of people afterwards too.

Old Promos

But that day I had a shoot producer, a hair girl from London, probably the best Make Up artist (AJ) in Brighton and about 4 hrs to shoot in, this time it would be me and Matt and 30 minute time slot.

So the band,
Blood Red Shoes have been NME favourites for a fair while now, they are a dope Brighton band, and all the hip kids love ‘em- plus they keep ticket prices low and don’t get all rockstar-esque anytime- which is always good. I was pretty unsure what to do, in fact I lay awake thinking about it for 3 nights straight- and finally we (matt and I) came up with a killer idea involving loads of medium format films, 70’s double exposures and backgrounds, but we had no time to test it. If you are a band that has a stack of money for a dope as hell promo idea then come tell us….and we can shoot but we had to shelve that idea as the budget didn’t stretch to test shots and the band had like 15 mins or so according to the PR girl….

So matt and I set this up, swiping the wallpaper from the Ophelia Fancy shoot getting Odisie to chuck a little of his blood at the wall, dragged stacks of speakers from my Tower Block, down 5 flights of stairs, (there was a dead dog in the lift that didn’t smell too hot) and into the car. Short stack of crap vinyl from charity shop and a lot of lighting tweaking. Steven bopped in looking pretty fresh really considering they have been touring for close on 2 years, and about 45 mins later, in classic Laura Mary way, we had a full 2 piece group ready to shoot. Less than 15minutes of shooting and we were done- and the band strolled off to do the interview with James. The benefit of bloody loads of testing and preparation….

If yr vaguely interested in the lighting, this one was really geared to what would happen to it in photoshop, so two Bowens 500w behind on half power and one 2m softbox on 500w bowens at full power, directly behind and camera above my head. Shot on a 20m lens.

Check out the Blood Red Shoes if you can, I haven’t seen them play live in about a year, but that’s cos when I tried in Berlin it was sold out so they must still be pullin in the crowds. They were great when I saw them tho, so go if you get the chance. They are off to Tokyo now, but new dates are up on their site now…..Blood Red Shoes

Posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 7:05 am in News and stuff.